


Used to be Seventeen

by womaninadream



Series: Legacies [1]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Analysis, Character Study, Drug Use, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, No beta we die like Sunset Curve, Other, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:49:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27156178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/womaninadream/pseuds/womaninadream
Summary: Trevor Wilson has a long overdue conversation with his past.(Inspired by the song Seventeen by Sharon Van Etten)A study on the complex cocktail of compassion and contempt one often feels viewing their present self through the lens of their younger self and vice-versa.The paradox of wishing you knew then what you know now, but recognizing that those mistakes are how you learned.You can't change the past but you might eventually have no choice but to face it anyway.
Relationships: Alex & Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Luke Patterson & Reggie
Series: Legacies [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985470
Comments: 16
Kudos: 109





	Used to be Seventeen

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so I know this is kind of rough and directionless but I simply NEEDED to get my Bobby/Trevor thoughts out. I'm gonna keep editing this and maybe extending it. 
> 
> Please go listen to the song in question if you haven't already, or at least read the lyrics!! It will hopefully enhance your reading experience and speak to my thought process and obsession with the dynamic formation of the self.

\----------------------

Trevor Wilson doesn't stay for Panic! At The Disco. His past is literally back to haunt him, undeniably now, and he simply can't be around people while he processes that information, especially not _at the Orpheum_. He kisses Carrie's hair and tells her to have fun while he goes home to make some calls. She nods but looks preoccupied, as she often has lately, and Trevor makes a mental note to ask her later if there's anything wrong. Talking things out comes naturally to neither of them, but if something's upsetting his baby he wants to know about it.

Right now, though, his mind is elsewhere, racing through half-buried memories and dislodging old, tangled emotions. Guilt is the heaviest, like filthy black oil swirling in his gut. Grief claws at his throat and squeezes his heart. Anger makes his skin hot and fear makes his blood cold. Somehow at the same time he feels hollowed out and weary. It's all so alien and so familiar at once. He's no longer the person he was when he first felt all of this, but he knows that person well. Pities him. And is suddenly one with him all over again.

He makes it up to his dressing room before he's overcome. His clothes feel too tight, the room too hot, his lungs too small. When he glances up at the mirror, for a moment it's his teenage self looking back at him, dishevelled and distraught and _accusing_.

He squeezes his eyes shut and rocks himself gently to guide his breath, slowing until the panic finally passes him over. He sends a silent thanks to Dr Crystal for their calming techniques as he clambers unsteadily back to his feet. He considers calling them but he can't think of how he might explain any of this.

Trevor Wilson. Forty-three. A dad. A producer. A celebrity. Nothing more than that now but a box that holds a past he's been too ashamed to peek at. He swallows a Xanax and faces himself.

Bobby Skinner. Seventeen. Re-stringing his guitar in the studio as beside him Luke feverishly scribbles new lyrics, bouncing his knee and singing fragments of melodies under his breath. They've just booked the Orpheum, against all odds, and spirits are the highest they've ever been. Less than two months until the show that would prove to everyone, beyond a doubt, that Sunset Curve were worth it. The endless hours writing and rehearsing, the sacrifices, the arguments- all worth it. Bobby doesn't realise he's smiling to himself until Alex kicks him in the shin and grins knowingly back at him like he's thinking the exact same thing. Then they're both laughing like crazy people and Luke is looking at them like they're crazy people but not for long, because it's infectious- that kind of delirious, full-body joy. It only gets worse a minute later when Reggie shows up and asks what's so funny, and none of them can stop laughing long enough to explain that it's nothing at all. Just that they're young and they're all together and their bright, shining future is suddenly almost close enough to touch. 

_This is the Bobby that stared back at him in the mirror on bad days, his young face twisted with uncomprehending contempt. This is the Bobby that hates Trevor's guts. This is the Bobby to whom Sunset Curve meant everything. This Bobby, free and innocent and undamaged, could never justify Trevor's choices. He wouldn't even want to try. Trevor hates Bobby right back because what gives him the right to judge?_ You're going to become me, _he tells Bobby viciously,_ you're going to feel the things I felt and by then it'll be too late to stop it. _But even as he says it, he wishes it weren't true, wishes he could change it, wishes he could take back everything he did to let himself down. Most of all he wishes he could take this kid in his arms and protect him from what's to come._

Bobby Skinner. Barely eighteen. Utterly alone and wrecked beyond imagination. He sometimes thinks _he_ might die too, just from how much it hurts. He sometimes wishes he _had_ died, alongside them. Anything would be better than this. His best friends, his future, his world - all gone in the space of an hour. He doesn't know what to do with his days without band practice. He doesn't know who he is without Sunset Curve. He doesn't know how to get by without his friends. He spends hours with his face buried in a tear-soaked pillow moaning _why why why_ over and over until his mom comes and lets him sob into her shoulder instead. _Why them? Why me? Why_ not _me? Why that night?_ There's no answer. There's nothing at all. They move to Seattle a couple months later. 

Trevor Wilson (before it felt true and natural to introduce himself as such). Twenty-two. Back in LA at long last and free of a name that's in news articles about dead teenagers and food safety. He's somebody new now and he's ready to reach again for the greatness he almost grasped back in '95. He's clutching a journal of old songs, rewritten now in his handwriting. He's finally put himself back together with the help of those lyrics, and he's so certain this is what they'd want for him. As their friend and as their bandmate and as the sole benefactor of Sunset Curve's potential. They'd want their songs to be heard and they'd want him to succeed, unburdened by public memory of a tragedy. He's going to make them so proud. 

Trevor Wilson. Twenty-seven. Realizing the betrayal he's committed, too late to undo it. He didn't immortalize Sunset Curve, he stole their legacy for himself. He's always been self-centred, he knows, but how did he fail to see that he wasn't the only one in mourning? How did he fail to think of their families? He hates, hates, _hates_ himself. He's begging for forgiveness but the only person left to offer it is himself and he's too busy wrestling with the urge to set fire to his platinums. His girlfriend goes for a few days to visit her parents (read: get away from Trevor's breakdown) and leaves a positive pregnancy test and a therapist's card on the kitchen island. Now it's too late to fix any of it because he has to look to the future. Trying his best to be a good father feels more like atonement than unravelling his career does. 

Trevor Wilson. Forty Three. Staring into an endless mirror maze of moments and mindsets and mistakes and successes and justifications and secrets he's hidden from himself. Fragments that don't seem to fit together to make a person, no matter how he arranges them.

Bobby (seventeen), who gets ahead of himself the first and only time they manage to con their way into a club. The boys carry him home and when they put him in bed, Luke carefully takes his shoes off for him and Reggie makes sure he's warm enough while Alex fetches a glass of water and some aspirin for the morning. When he turns up late to the studio the next day feeling like pure dirt, the guys look positively smug and don't hesitate to rip him to shreds. Bobby's grumpy and he's embarrassed and he's never felt more loved (not that he'd tell them that).

Trevor (thirty-one), who's meeting his daughter's new friend Julie and her parents. Her mother, Rose, knows him somehow and he assumes she's a fan. She takes him aside later to tell him she was there that night at the Orpheum and she's glad to see him doing so well now. His legs almost give out as he suddenly remembers her rubbing his back while he vomited into the pansies out front of the hospital. He apologizes profusely for forgetting her. He doesn't have much memory of that night but he's grateful to know her again. He's grateful for the chance to say thank you. Most of all he's grateful to be able to talk to someone about those times and those guys again after all these years, even if he can't tell her everything. 

Bobby (seventeen), who lends Alex a pair of sweatpants when he breaks down after practice one evening, telling them he'd rather not go home tonight and, when they press, why. They all stay together at the studio, squeezing to fit on the sofa bed. Bobby is boiling with a righteous fury on Alex's behalf, and writes a song after the other guys fall asleep. He comes across it a week later and tosses it away, embarrassed at his efforts. Luke would always be the real lyricist of the group, and they're all writing something for Alex together now anyway. 

Trevor (twenty-six), who's in Nashville, touring his sophomore album. He's chatting to a kid he heard busking on a street corner. She's dressed all in black, a motorcycle jacket draped haphazardly over her open guitar case. She tells him with a lopsided smile that she got tired of hiding her love of country music, so she moved out here where she knew she'd be among friends. Trevor tips her $200 and calls his label that very evening to give them the girl's details. She's got real talent, he tells them, and it's the truth. He doesn't say she reminded him so much of Reggie he almost started believing in reincarnation for real. 

Bobby (eighteen), who's new in town, again, but this time he knows he's not making any friends. Nobody knows how to talk to him now and he doesn't blame them. No one could replace friends like Luke and Reggie and Alex anyway. The loneliness sits heavy on his chest but he's learning to get used to it. He grows out his hair (not with intent, he just can't make himself care) and plucks crap little songs out on his untuned guitar.

Trevor (forty-two) at Rose's funeral, offering Julie, Ray, and Carlos words that he knows sound meaningless to them. He wishes he could tell them how she was there for him on the worst night of his life. How she stayed all night with a kid she barely knew because he was in shock and pain and she was far too _good_ to leave someone alone like that. 

Bobby (twenty-one), who once again makes it his goal to become Someone. A reincarnation, of sorts. He's been doing yoga and cooking classes and he's learning how to be present again. He visualises letting it all go. The grief, the survivor's guilt, the fixation on everything that could have been. His therapist encourages him to pick up music again, so one day he tunes his guitar, and when muscle memory takes him through some Sunset Curve songs, he's surprised to find that he doesn't feel like the world is ending. Maybe he has a future after all. He's a blank slate, brimming with fresh potential. He cuts his hair and decides he's going to move back to LA. 

Trevor (forty-three), who's realizing that even if they're back, there's still no answer. There's still nothing. He hears Carrie come home. _God, she's almost as old as they were._ She's still a child. They were children. He digs the demo CD out of the battered shoebox he keeps in the back of his closet. Opens it up and looks at the picture of the four of them. _Children._ He's so happy to see them again even though he knows they hate him now. He knows because they're still seventeen, and he was seventeen once too. He'll never make them understand the things he learned from living after they were dead. 

\----------------------------------------------

**Author's Note:**

> So Seventeen is one of my favorite songs and I'm always looking for new perspectives on its themes. Not sure why I latched onto this musical children's show about a girl and her ghost band as an outlet for my bottomless array of feelings about growing up, and reflecting on mistakes and the person you were when you made them, but here we are. I just think it's interesting how, really, nobody is ever a whole, finished person. We never stop growing and we never stop looking back on our past and wishing we'd known better. 
> 
> Bobby/Trevor is a really interesting character to explore these ideas with. Partially because canon hasn't given us a lot yet except for the information that he experienced a huge loss at a young age and has made some seemingly very selfish choices since then that led to great fame and fortune. There's just so much potential with him!! I want to know how he coped with his grief and how he justified his actions and what he would say to the phantoms if he had the chance.


End file.
